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review "You're
a failure, Zero, a failure. A waste product...back you go. Back to
your sunless groove, the raw material of slums and wars, the ready
prey of the first jingo or demagogue or political adventurer who takes
the trouble to play upon your ignorance and credulity and provincialism.
You poor, spineless, brainless boob. I'm sorry for you!"
During my own poor, spineless and prolonged journey through day job hell, I came to know several Mr. Zeros. He's the sort of fellow who hates his job, hates his life, yet craves the very relentless, mind-numbing routine that is the root of his self-loathing. To paraphrase Jim Morrison, Mr. Zero is locked in a prison of his own devise. The genius of Elmer Rice's 1923
"The Adding Machine", now enjoying a much-welcome revival
at the Gem Theatre in Garden Grove, is that the play just keeps becoming
more timely, more apt, more disconcertingly relevant as we march (or
are dragged) deeper and deeper into the hallowed Information Age.
Update this! Upgrade that! Your 300mhz Pentium II will be obsolete
before the end of Q2 of this year and you with it! Jones' Zero is a most convincing boob, oblivious to his own withered soul, the perfect sap marching dumbly through a wasted life towards an eternal death. Eternity, as Rice deals it here, is sending Zero on an endless loop from meaningless labor to murder to judgment to execution to afterlife to rebirth...as a clueless cluck eager to get to his new job running a machine with the "slight pressure" from the big toe of his right foot while buried deep in a coal mine. "Say!" Zero enthuses when informed of his new task. "That'll be some machine, won't it!" Director Kevin Cochran and his able cast headed by Jones and Sonja Alarr as Daisy, the object of Zero's deeply repressed desire, lead us along this hamster wheel with rarely a false step. Cochran's set design and staging deserve special note, as he makes maximum use of the Gem's space. His execution is truly brilliant in its simplicity and, above all, surprise. A wall in Zero's house becomes his zoo-like cage as the upstage opens to accommodate gawkers vaguely curious of the "North American murderer" at feeding time. Behind them, a rolling steel door rattles open to reveal the smoke-filled, backlit eternity Zero is dispatched into. Such pure theatricality so boldly delivered is one of the true pleasures of live drama. I wish I saw more of it more often. Likewise, David Ortega's inventive sound design and David Darwin's lighting complement and enhance Cochran's fluid staging. In his 1963 autobiography, Rice dismissed the influence of German Expressionism on his play, claiming to have become "acquainted" with the movement only at a later date. But viewed from a distance of 75 years, the influence of its time upon "The Adding Machine" is obvious and undeniable. If there is a fault to be found with the Gem's production, it is that Cochran & Co. have not plumbed the darkest recesses of Zero's private Expressionistic hell deeply enough. Limited somewhat by a supporting cast seemingly skimmed from musical theater, the production at time breezes airily over the playwright's prescient, ever-deepening nightmare of proto-existentialist Angst and failure. But this is a minor quibble and quite possibly merely a matter of personal taste. Above all else, the Gem is to be congratulated, admired and supported for dusting off this too-seldom seen American classic and presenting the genius and unique vision of Elmer Rice to a whole new generation of theatergoers. |